The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear
Bardach, Eugene
tional criterion in the daily measurement of life's small pleasures. Bellow clearly has his share in those small pleasures, and To Jerusalem and Back fully reflects his enjoyment. The book is...
...Beckmann goes to great lengths to develop the contrastingly poor health and safety record for fossil fuels...
...This followed by only three years a major oil storage tank fire in Bayonne, New Jersey, started by the collision of two nearby ships...
...The International Atomic Energy Agency can insist on adequate safeguards, of course, but the IAEA has negligible enforcement power...
...It is truly a pity that Beckmann should have cut himself off from that larger readership to which he would be entitled by virtue of his interesting substantive arguments...
...24 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 They are indeed available, and the details, which Beckmann unfortunately omits, can be found in the authoritative book Nuclear T~eft: Risks and Safeguards by Mason Willrich and Theodore B. Taylor...
...Beckmann also fails to mention the most important institutional aspect of the U.S...
...Spokesmen for the endangered class have been able to persuade themselves and many who are outside this class about the evils of nuclear power mainly because the spokesmen for the opposition have been so untrustworthy...
...And incidentally, she should not be referred to deprecatingly as "Lorna," which Beckmann occasionally does...
...Most analyses of nuclear-power risks, however, fail to examine the dangers of"not going nuclear...
...But it fails to acknowledge the more important fact that the AEC and the civilian nuclear power industry behaved very badly over the last two decades...
...This solution is technically feasible and seems to me to present no difficult political or social problems...
...Under the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, we are obliged to facilitate "the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy...
...Indeed, the radium and thorium isotopes in coal ash emit radioactivity many times in exces's of what NRC standards would allow if the NRC were responsible for regulating this waste...
...In addition, the wind would have to blow the gases towards population centers if humans were to be affected directly...
...Before reading Beckmann I had been somewhat skeptical of nuclear power, but, it seemed to me, open-minded...
...Even if Beckmann were correct on every point, his own book would be mistrusted...
...Outstanding monographs by college faculty, graduate students, and others qualified in scholarly pursuits will be distinguished through publication, news release, and distribution under the sponsorship of the Foundation...
...Coal mining, for example, in the late 1960s led to 246 fatal accidents per year...
...The Heritage Foundation AMERICAN THEMES MONOGRAPH CONTEST The Heritage Foundation, the Washingtonbased, private institute for public-policy research, has begun its American Themes monograph contest to promote scholarship in United States domestic and foreign affairs...
...On the contrary --and perhaps despite himself, for he is far from sanguine about Israel's prospects-Bellow's portrait of Israeli life, its ordinary routine against a background of impassioned argument and continuous danger, is reassuring...
...BOOK REVIEW The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear PetrBeckmann / The GolemPress / $10.95 Eugene Bardach Petr Beckmann's short book The Health Hazards of Not Going Nuclear is squarely in the genre of the political tract...
...Other nations, however, are not obliged to create a high quality institutional system to safeguard against nuclear theft...
...They ignored the clear signs of waning public confidence...
...There are many possible solutions, it now appears, and Beckmann's favorite seems to be sealing the wastes into a certain newly-developed type of fireproof, waterproof, and earthquake-proof glass and dropping the glass cubes into deep geological salt formations...
...If nuclear energy is so good, why are so many people suspicious of it...
...Although safety standards have occasionally been faulted for being too low, and the enforcing agency (the Atomic Energy Commission and later the NRC) often faulted for tolerating non-compliance, the fact remains that no one working in this country's civilian nuclear power industry has ever died (or fallen ill) due to radiation poisoning...
...The former are one in 20,000 per reactor year...
...Lorna Salzman, of Friends of the Earth, may unwittingly not be a friend of the earth that will be stripped for coal-mining if nuclear power is forestalled, but surely she is not engaged in "brainwashing" or "totalitarian propaganda...
...This element of atmospheric chance is particularly instructive--since it affects the potential consequences of a reactor meltdown too...
...For this class, Beckmann argues, nuclear power is a symbol of all that is supposed to be wicked about America...
...Beckmann, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado, is perhaps most informative on the subject of nuclear waste disposal...
...Paul Ehrlich may be unwise and, by some standards, possibly immoral in being willing to consider coercive means for population control, but are these grounds for Beckmann likening him to "an SSObersturmfuehrer...
...Nor--as Beckmann convincingly demonstrates-has a meltdown even come close, even in the well-publicized cases of the Browns Ferry, Alabama, fire of March 1975 and the emergency shutdown of the Fermi I reactor near Detroit in October 1966...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 25...
...And the Israel of To Jerusalem and Back is in this sense undeniably a,jewish state--no small asset, given the Jews' record of survival...
...It is also intelligent, informative, readable, and persuasive--persuasive to me at least...
...So, one need not rely on the whims of Zephyr and Aeolus to protect human populations...
...The granite in Manhattan's Grand Central Station, for instance, emits more radiation than an NRC-licensed reactor facility...
...He says theft is very difficult, that there are easier ways to apply blackmail, and that a "no-nonsense" deterrence policy will discourage would-be saboteurs and hijackers...
...With respect to waste disposal, the contrast with fossil fuels is again instructive...
...If the CED is right, their arguments are powerful reinforcements for Beckmann's position...
...The book is not, as such a book might easily be, unhappy or discouraging...
...The routine, day-to-day, health and safety risks of nuclear power generation are essentially zero, according to Beckmann...
...Obviously the endangered class theory has considerable merit in this connection...
...Beckmann is clearly a valuable national resource, and he badly needs a collaborator who will keep him from squandering his easily depleted credibility...
...Not the Ford Foundation but the AEC should have commissioned the Willrich and Taylor study, for instance...
...Still, we should be reluctant to put too much faith in psychology and politics...
...Beckmann argues that the problems of nuclear power are minor in comparison with the problems of sticking with the familiar technologies based on fossil fuels...
...One must also be able to overcome aversion to his political crankiness...
...While a new technology might have its problems, these must be evaluated in the light of the problems associated with the old technology for which the new might substitute...
...All this is true...
...For years the AEC pooh-poohed the problem, and nuclear advocates assured us it was trivial and easily solved...
...The United States may or may not be able to affect these worldwide developments very much...
...If the IAEA cannot be much improved--and I suspect it cannot--then we must wonder what implications the development of our own "plutonium economy" might have for international relations and, more directly, for our national security...
...This is due mainly to the stringency of the standards enforced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC...
...That is, there will be no need to have what Barry Commoner calls a "nuclear priesthood" watching over the wastes for thousands of years...
...This is the class of well-to-do and avant-garde people who read radical chic journals and hate capitalist, democratic America, the very America that has endowed them with privileges all but unknown in the previous history of the world...
...contrast, a 90,000-barrel oil storage complex in South Brooklyn caught fire and exploded in.January 1976...
...In both cases, the explosions created deadly billows of oily black smoke that would have caused many thousands of deaths had the wind and temperature conditions been slightly different...
...One of the fu'st lessons we teach our students at the Graduate School of Public Policy is that decision-makers must always consider the option of "permitting present trends to continue without interference...
...O. Marc Tangner, Director of Research, The Heritage Foundation, 513 C Street, N.E., Washington, D.C...
...Of course, the chances that the gases would escape from the 31/2-foot steel-and-concrete containment dome that encases any reactor are close to zero...
...The only adverse effect of a meltdown is the release of radioactive gases which would ordinarily dissipate harmlessly into the atmosphere unless a temperature inversion were combined with a slight wind...
...WiUrich and Taylor estimate the costs of a highly effective safeguards system to be just over one percent of the total costs of operating the atomic power industry...
...Ralph Nader may be wrong or even wrongheaded, but he is not "vile...
...Among the (probably small) population of persuadable skeptics, I doubt that more than a small proportion have the required tolerance...
...Instead of welcoming public scrutiny, the industry and its regulators have avoided it...
...Nonfatal injuries and the high incidence of pneumoconiosis ("black lung" disease) make the contrast even more striking...
...The options here are as murky as the problem is serious...
...Vandals, terrorists, and assorted mischiefmakers would find hundreds of more available and useful objects with which to occupy themselves...
...True to type, it is cranky, paranoiac, and abusive...
...Beckmann relies on the currently voguish "theory of the endangered class...
...But they did not solve it...
...In Eugene Bardach teaches in the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley...
...The Committee for Economic Development (CED), in its recent study "Nuclear Energy and National Security," recommends full-steam-ahead development of our domestic industry and expansion of our nuclear-related exports as a basis for taking aggressive diplomatic action "to influence the way the world's nuclear economy is safeguarded...
...Consider, for example, the probabilities of a reactor meltdown in conjunction with the probabilities of explosion of an oil storage complex...
...nuclear power industry, its linkage to international politics...
...For the occupation with affairs of daily life in a hostile universe is unquestionably a,jewish habit...
...Studies are encouraged that bring to focus individual problems in the areas of public-policy --whether governmental, social, economic, defense, or otherwise-that threaten the survival of the American republic and that offer constructive alternatives in keeping with the principles of free enterprise, individual liberty, and national security...
...Unfortunately, it will take more than mere openmindedness to permit Beckmann's useful analysis to take hold in a larger public...
...Wastes in such a form are as invulnerable to natural hazards as one could possibly wish, and it is impossible to imagine why any human being should wish to tamper with them...
...We should prefer technological solution's, provided they are available and not prohibitively expensive...
...On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that a respectable argument can probably be made for the contrary position...
...Please submit only finished manuscripts of publishable quality to Dr...
...Coal ash contains traces of poisonous heavy metals and carcinogenic hydrocarbons, but tens of millions of tons of coal ash are dumped in landfills every year in this country which are easily leached by rainwater...
...Although Beckmann's arguments are generally rather compelling, he does not do as good a job as he could with respect to the possible hazards of nuclear theft and blackmail...
...Not surprisingly, a meltdown has never occurred...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
